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cerned. Hegel abstracts from the determinate social forms of

forced labour, but if we situate labour in its contemporary con-

text what do we see? Although modern wage-labourers have no

identification with their work in the capitalist labour-process they

do know that this work is worth something; it is objectified in

value, than which nothing is more permanent in the capitalist

accumulation process. But household labour is not thus socially

recognised and valued. So, in spite of the genuine objectification

involved, domestic labourers do not experience much sense of self-

worth through it. At best in some obscure way they sense the

fetishism involved in value and regard their own contribution as

more ‘real’. Much of the present wave of feminism started from

terminally bored housewives, but if Betty Friedan and company

had a sense of self-worth it probably came from an education. In

short, no Hegelian dialectic of women’s liberation can be based

on housework. The disintegration of the family may rather be

consequent on women’s recognition outside it, in suffrage, wage

work, etc. reacting back on it. Certainly Hegel signally failed to

draw radical lessons from his own explicit linkage in his System

der Sittlichkeit of the master-slave relation and marriage.

HEGEL’S MARRIAGE

This gives us the occasion to consider that Hegel himself married.

How did he assume the role of lord and master? Mind-boggling

though it is to speculate about a love-affair with Hegel (der

Anstrengung des Besgriffs is just not in it), he courted and won a

well-born lady named Marie in Nuremberg in 1811, when he was

41. Indeed we have two surviving poems sent to her. Here is a

taste:

Narrow bands dividing us fall away!

Sacrifice alone is the heart’s true way!

I expand myself to you, as you to me.

May what isolates us go up in fire, cease to be.

For life is life only as reciprocated,

By love in love is it alone created.

40 SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY

To the kindred soul abandoned,

The heart opens up in strength gladdened.

Once the spirit atop free mountains has flown,

It holds back nothing of its own.

Living to see myself in you, and you to see yourself

in me,

In the enjoyment of celestial bliss shall we be.

(to his fiancée, 13 April 1811. Letters p. 237)

However, it is worth noting that, although Hegel had become

friendly with the romantic circle in Jena when he lived there, his

views were not theirs. (Ursula Vogel, 1987, has given a fascinat-

ing portrait of this group and especially of its revolt against gen-

der stereotypes.) At the centre of the group was the remarkable

Caroline Schlegel-Schelling but the leading propagandist was

Friedrich Schlegel whose novel Lucinde (1797) created a public

scandal. Hegel charges Schlegel with making marriage a superflu-

ous ceremony if all that matters is love. Hegel argues that love is

only a feeling while marriage is a substantive ethical tie (Phil.

Right §164 and additions pp. 262–3).

Marie seems to have expressed the typical romantic conception

that where duty enters love is lost; but Hegel tried to impress on

her that marriage as a ‘religious bond’ meant more than any

earthly happiness. This sort of thing offended Marie, and he had

to write a couple of letters trying to persuade her that he wasn’t

running down their feelings in elevating the spiritual side of the

matter. With the marriage at last on the agenda, Hegel wrote (13

July 1811) to his friend Caroline Paulus, the novelist (not to be

confused with the other Caroline whom she and Hegel disliked),

about his happiness, and Marie interjected comments in the mar-

gin. Where Hegel refers to Caroline’s husband Professor Paulus as

‘the lord and master’ (Letters p. 247) Marie appends the follow-

ing fascinating comment:

Despite the length at which my lord and master goes on in

his epistle, and as humble as the little corner he assigns me

may be, I nonetheless know that the good Caroline Paulus

will not lose sight of me. I have already raised my little voice

in the course of my master’s discourse. But each time I

HEGEL AS LORD AND MASTER 41

respectfully silenced myself again, though I would gladly

have confirmed many a thing at greater length.

(p. 248)

The irony expressed here captures beautifully the paradox that

marriage meant to a woman of spirit. There was no doubt that it

meant acceptance of subordination: the best that could be

achieved was an ironic acceptance of the female condition, an

internal transcendence—but in reality a capitulation to inequality

of recognition.

III NATURE AND SPIRIT

The figure of Antigone, and the question of gender generally, is

bound up with, and has to be situated within, Hegel’s treatment

of the arising of spirit from nature, from the life of feeling to that

of self-conscious reason (ethics). Easton (1986) argues that the

family is a fundamental mediating moment between unconscious

nature and pure self-legislating reason. This certainly accords

with Hegel’s first philosophy of spirit (1803/4) in which he

described the evolution of spirit out of the natural bases of

human existence along three fundamental dimensions: a) the fam-

ily, b) labour (see part 1 of Arthur, 1988), c) language.

The problem in Hegel’s understanding of the family as such a

mediating moment is that it is precisely the woman who is

assigned to represent one dimension, and the man the other, and,

even in ethical relations (such as the family is understood to bear)

there is repeated the master-servant structure. We saw that both

the master-slave and family dynamics are given an original role in

the growth of spirit out of nature. The master-slave struggle is a

lower stage than the family because although it raises conscious-

ness from natural desire to self-consciousness it is not yet ethical

as it will be when translated into the family. (The master-slave

dialectic is really about consciousness in general as against immer-

sion in nature; it does not deal with social situations of ethical

import.) But the conflation of the two in Hegel’s early work facili-

tates gender stereotyping even in the ethical realm.

The two ‘crunch’ quotations from the main works considered

are as follows:

From the Phenomenology (280):

42 SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY

Nature, not the accident of circumstances or choice, assigns

one sex to one law, the other to the other law; or con-

versely, the two ethical powers themselves give themselves

an individual existence and actualise themselves in the two

sexes.

From the Philosophy of Right:

165. The difference in the physical characteristics of the two

sexes has a rational basis and consequently acquires an intel-

lectual and ethical significance. This significance is deter-

mined by the difference into which the ethical substantiality,

as the concept, internally sunders itself in order that its vital-

ity may become a concrete unity consequent upon the

difference.

Both of these passages exhibit the extraordinary ambiguity of

Hegel’s dialectic. Is it a top-down or a bottom-up movement?

First we have the mystical idealist notion of the concept sundering

itself and seeking to actualise its elements. Secondly we have the

naturally given concrete difference raising itself to social signifi-

cance. Hegel seems to combine the worst kind of idealism with

the worst kind of naturalism. He presents a conceptual argument

for gendered social roles while at the same time attributing these

to the two sexes in virtue of their supposed essential characteris-

tics. For example, it is obvious that the distribution of the ‘two

laws’ is not a contingent one.

The structure of my argument has been as follows:

a) Is Hegel’s sexism rooted in naturalistic assumptions about the

female essence?

b) It cannot be: because in his social theory he opposes strategies

which base themselves on what is natural to man. In his the-

ory natural determinations are superseded (aufgehoben)

within the realm of freedom established in the modern state

through spiritual self-determination.

c) But in the mediations elevating the structure of reason over

nature it turns out that the moment of transcendence is

achieved mainly within the male sphere and the female repre-

sents mainly the moment of continuity with the natural

ground of human life. This happens precisely in virtue of her

HEGEL AS LORD AND MASTER 43

essential affinities with nature. Thus Hegel reproduces the

nature/reason split within the social, in spite of his insistence

that the social cannot be reduced to the natural.

Hegel, in endorsing the conditions of women’s oppression accord-

ing to ‘the necessity of the concept’ is of course only being true to

his method of providing a rational reconstruction of the existing

order; he accommodates within the state all the contradictions of

the present state of things including those involved in the situa-

tion of women. Is this conservative prejudice to be corrected by a

more faithful, and critical, application of the fundamental princi-

ples (Hodge)?—or must such a ‘Young Hegelian’ move be want-

ing (Marx)?

Throughout this discussion of Hegel’s sexism I have accepted

the terms of his gender stereotyping, in which the masculine is

clearly closer to the human ideal than the feminine in virtue of the

male’s greater scope for rational self-determination in the objec-

tive realm of spirit. However, to finish, let us recall that the entire

tradition of Western philosophy may well be defective, not just in

identifying the masculine with the human, but in identifying the

human with the masculine (Lloyd, 1984; Plumwood, 1988). If

this is the case Hegel’s account of transcendence may presuppose

a distorted vision of the human and the natural.

REFERENCES

This chapter, now revised, was first published in Radical Philoso-

phy 50 (Autumn 1988)

Arthur, C.J. (1988) ‘Hegel’s Theory of Value’ in M.Williams, ed.,

Value, Social Form and the State, Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Cullen, Bernard, ‘Hegel’s Historical Phenomenology and Social

Analysis’ in Lamb (1987).

Easton, Susan M., ‘Hegel and Feminism’ in Lamb (1987) (an

expansion of her paper in Radical Philosophy 38, 1984).

Easton, Susan M., Review of Lloyd (1984) in Explorations in

Knowledge Vol. III, No. 1, 1986.

Grimshaw, Jean (1986) Feminist Philosophers, Wheatsheaf

Books, Brighton.

Hegel, G.W.F. (1892) History of Philosophy, trans. E.S.Haldane

and F.H. Simpson, Routledge, London.

44 SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY

Hegel, G.W.F. (1984) Letters, trans. Clark Butler and Christine

Seiler, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

Hegel, G.W.F. (1975) Natural Law, trans. T.M.Knox, University

of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

Hegel, G.W.F. (1977) Phenomenology of Spirit, trans.

A.V.Miller, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Hegel, G.W.F. (1970) Philosophy of Nature, trans. M.J.Petry,

George Allen & Unwin, London, Vol. 3.

Hegel, G.W.F. (1965) Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M.Knox,

Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Hegel, G.W.F. (1979) System of Ethical Life and First Philoso-

phy of Spirit, trans. H.S.Harris and T.M.Knox, SUNY Press,

Albany, NY.

Hodge, Joanna, ‘Women and the Hegelian State’ in Kennedy and

Mendus (1987).

Kaufmann, Walter (1971) ‘Hegel on Tragedy’ in W.Steinkraus,

ed., New Studies in the Philosophy of Hegel, New York.

Kennedy, E. and Mendus, S., eds (1987) Women in Western Polit-

ical Philosophy, Wheatsheaf Books, Brighton.

Lamb, David, ed. (1987) Hegel and Modern Philosophy, Croom

Helm, London.

Lloyd, Genevieve (1984) The Man of Reason, Methuen, London.

Lloyd, Genevieve (1985) ‘Masters, Slaves and Others’ in R.Edg-

ley and R.Osborne, eds, Radical Philosophy Reader, Verso,

London (previously in Radical Philosophy 34, 1983).

Melchinger, Siegfried (1974) Sophocles, trans. D.A.Scrase,

Ungar, New York.

Plumwood, Val (1988) ‘Women, Humanity and Nature’ in Radi-

cal Philosophy 48.

Rousseau, J.-J. (1973) Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,

trans. G.D.H. Cole, Dent.

Sophocles, Antigone (1947) trans. E.F.Watling, Penguin, Har-

mondsworth.

Steiner, George (1984) Antigones, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Vogel, Ursula, ‘Humboldt and the Romantics: Neither Hausfrau

nor Citoyenne’ in Kennedy and Mendus (1987).

HEGEL AS LORD AND MASTER 45

MORALITY, MASCULINITY

AND THE MARKET

Ross Poole

Two conceptions of morality dominate contemporary discussion:

utilitarianism, which specifies the content of morality in terms of

the maximisation of total happiness or want satisfaction, and

Kantianism, which defines morality in terms of formal principles

of consistency. One purpose of this paper is to locate these con-

ceptions in a larger discursive context; that provided by a concep-

tion of the market as the primary mechanism for the distribution

of social goods. The claim that there are conceptual linkages

between utilitarianism and a concept of the market is not, per-

haps, very controversial. After all, there are well known historical

associations between utilitarianism and both classical and neo-

classical accounts of market behaviour. Despite these affinities, I

will argue that it is not utilitarianism, but a form of Kantianism

which supplies a morality adequate to the market, though a Kan-

tianism which is informed by much the same conceptions of indi-

viduality and relations between individuals as utilitarianism and

which retains most of the substantial moral content of utilitarian-

ism. Indeed, from the perspective provided by the market, the

common ground between utilitarianism and Kantianism appears

much more significant than their differences.

The concept of the market defines an important aspect of a

‘public’ sphere of social existence: as such, it is contrasted with a

‘private’ realm of domesticity and personal relations. This con-

trast plays an important role in the construction of gender. The

public realm of the market, with its associated conceptions of

individuality, purposive action and rationality, is a male domain;

the ‘nether world’ (Hegel) of the family, with its associated princi-

ples of relationship, care, and emotion, is one in which female

identity is constructed and contained. These two realms exist in a

relationship of mutual presupposition and exclusion; and the

nature of each is determined by what it excludes.

Thus, to the

extent that utilitarian and Kantian moralities are conceptually

linked to the public—and male—domain of market behaviour,

they too are characterised by the exclusion of the personal and

emotional—and female—from their domain.

The various figures which are constructed in this paper—of util-

itarianism and Kantianism, of the market, of masculinity, and so

on—are discursive ones. What I wish to argue is that these figures

exist within the same conceptual terrain, and that we will not

understand any of them very well unless we locate them in rela-

tion to each other. Of course, the conceptual structures displayed

are historically specific ones, and have real (extra-discursive)

causes and effects. But it is not my intention to explore these. At

most, I will occasionally assume that the various figures con-

structed play an important role, not just in moral philosophy and

our ordinary moral consciousness, but also in defining for us cer-

tain aspects of our own identity and that of the social world we

inhabit. But the extent to which this assumption is justified must

be left to the judgement of the reader.

THE MARKET

We may construct a concept of a simple market economy out of

three elements:

1) The individual (whom I will assume, for reasons which will

emerge shortly, to be male). This individual must be supposed

to have a variety of wants which are largely self-directed (i.e.

the conditions for their satisfaction do not make essential ref-

erence to the wants of other individuals). The objects required

to satisfy these wants are ‘goods’.

2) The social division of labour. The various processes by which

goods are produced are distributed amongst distinct individu-

als or groups of individuals. Since individual wants are vari-

ous, individuals exist in a situation of interdependence, in the

sense that any given individual is dependent for the satisfac-

tion of his wants on the productive activity of others.

3) Private ownership. The goods produced, and presumably the

MORALITY, MASCULINITY AND THE MARKET 47

means of producing them, exist as private property. Hence

they are not available directly to satisfy the wants of those

who do not own them. This tension—between interdepen-

dence and private ownership—is resolved through exchange:

individuals exchange goods which they own but do not want

for goods they want but do not own. Thus, goods become

commodities. We may also suppose that money exists as a

medium of exchange, where money is a good which both mea-

sures the exchange value of other commodities and is

exchangeable with them.

In a market situation constructed in this way each individual will

strive to further his interests, i.e. maximise the satisfaction of his

wants. In order to do so he must participate in exchange rela-

tions. But in order to do this, he must possess, and presumably

have produced, goods that other individuals want. Thus, self-

interest must become socially productive. Again, each individual

will strive to further his interests by exchanging his own goods

for as much as possible and by purchasing the goods of others for

as little as possible. However, so long as coercion is not brought

to bear, each must accept a price determined by market forces,

that is, by the ratio of the supply of similar goods to the effective

demand for them. Those who are fortunate or skilful will benefit,

and those who are unfortunate or stupid will suffer. However, as

fluctuations in supply and demand are reflected in the price of

commodities, those individuals who are able to relocate their pro-

ductive activity will use this information to move away from

areas of over-production to those where demand exceeds supply.

Hence, there will be a tendency towards an equilibrium of supply

and demand. At this happy point, those wants which find expres-

sion in the market, that is, the wants of those engaged in socially

productive activity, will be satisfied by the market. Further, since

it is not possible for individuals to determine the selling price of

their goods, the best way to maximise the satisfaction of their

wants through market activity is to improve their productive effi-

ciency. Thus, the market will tend towards maximising the quan-

tity of goods produced by given amounts of human productive

activity.

These results may be called ‘invisible hand’ theorems (after

Adam Smith) where the point of this phrase is to pick out the fact

that under certain social conditions, results are achieved which

48 SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY

may be desirable but which are not brought about by actions

which are designed to bring them about. Rather, they are

achieved by indirection: individuals pursue their own essentially

self-directed goals; but, as a consequence of their activity, the

wants of many others are satisfied. There is, in other words, a

hiatus between the intentional content of individual activity and

its overall social significance.

If the commodities exchanged include the capacity to perform

productive work (‘labour power’), i.e. the scope of the commod-

ity market is extended so as to include a labour market, then the

concept of a simple market economy becomes that of a capitalist

or ‘possessive’ market.

While this transition affects the detail, it

does not affect the substance of the invisible hand theories out-

lined above. The wages of labour will also be determined by mar-

ket forces; some will benefit and some will suffer as a conse-

quence; but so long as there is free movement in the market place,

those involved will be able to move from one kind of production

to another, and the tendency will be for labour to be employed in

those areas where there is a demand. If the commodity labour

power were produced in the same way as other commodities,

then there would also be a tendency for there to be an equilib-

rium between the supply of labour and the demand for it. How-

ever, there are, as we shall see in a moment, good reasons not to

make this assumption.

Neither of the concepts of a market economy that I have out-

lined corresponds in any simple way to any past or present social

reality. In every society there are positions, e.g. of status, which

carry with them entitlement to social goods independently of the

market; there are also goods, such as prestige, honour, attractive-

ness, which only roughly correlate with those goods distributed

through market activity. Still there is no doubt that the market

has been a pervasive feature of modern social life, and it has been

the construction of a concept of a market which has seemed to

many social theorists from the eighteenth century on to provide

the key to the understanding of much that is characteristic of, and

specific to, the advanced societies.

There is, however, one dimension in which the concept of the

market is not just incomplete with respect to, but also parasitic

on, another aspect of social existence. The social relations consti-

tuted by the market presuppose a sphere of social life in which

the individuals who participate in the market are themselves pro-

MORALITY, MASCULINITY AND THE MARKET 49